'Where the Wild Things Are'

If you ask a gardener what she grew, the list will be too long. She will start listing and find that the list is an autobiography — the chamomile she planted in the first year, the rose that came back after the hard frost, the marigold she has grown every year because her grandmother grew it, the bachelor’s button that simply appeared one season and has never left. The garden is a record of every decision she has made and every year she has kept making them.

This buckle is the physical answer to that question. Not a representation of a garden — the garden itself, pressed into a rectangle and worn at the waist. But the longer you look at a piece like this, the more the question changes. It isn’t about inventory. It’s about the thing that grows in the place between the named flowers, in the corners she doesn’t cut back, in the beds where she lets the plants make some of their own decisions. That is where the wild things are. Not the monsters from the story. The unkempt and the unexpected, doing exactly what they were always going to do.

This buckle is for the woman whose garden has always run a little loose — because she knows that is where the most interesting things happen.